A Liver Short by Anonymous23 - An upscale meat purveyor serves their product just in time. - Short, Horror

I found the first two pages to be a struggle to get through due to the stilted dialogue and mysterious speech. Then on page 3 onwards this really picks up and becomes much more enjoyable after the reveal. Very creepy premise.

The start reads like a bit of a pisstake so I thought it would be a DNS lol. But it settles into a creepy sort of tale. The dialogue wasn’t bad. It was sorta predictable what would happen but it was no prob.

The hand sanitizer was barely there and you may lose some points for that but it was pretty well written and I enjoyed it.

It's an okay story.  The ending was the best part of the story.  The plane featured along with the HS.  Although the plane served a purpose.  The HS didn't quite work for me.  Overall, I felt the story was slow.  But I guess it does meet the criteria.

It's basically the story from the film that was on the Eastern European train. Maybe it was even called Train.

It really could have used a twist at the end, even the most obvious one...Pars getting his comeuppance from Butch.

Code No further motion of him...

What?

Code ...stuff seems all right.

Hm...

Code ...legs spread and laid on some bulky displays near the side window.

What are bulky displays?


OK... so it's meat and not organs for transplant being sold. That makes sense now why any liver would do.

A mistake at the end is that you call it the most expensive flesh on earth. Liver is not flesh.

However, this is the best I've read so far. I almost stopped reading due to the logic issue with the organs... but I carried on just in case you had that base covered. You did. Nice work.

BUTCH
God. I really liked Jenny.
This line really made me laugh.

NESB writer? Only due to some of the odd phrasings.
That said, you evoked a nice style here. Some of your descriptions/action lines were really good:

The scars and furrows in his face speak for
a heavy acne problem in his youth.

Many bodies swivel, the hook in their bunghole, the legs
spread out to the sides, broken from the hip joint, hanging
in the musculature only.
Apart from the use of bunghole which I personally would have saved for character dialogue, not description.

Quite shockingly horrific and graphic, not something I'd want to watch, but a very original take. Not sure how you have a slaughterhouse on an aircraft...

The sanitizer here really was token only.

"No further motion of him, stuffs seems all right." Oddly written. And, frankly, I'd recommend just striking it. Not very often that you have to tell the reader what a character DOESN'T do. And, the calmness of his co-pilot ("chills") in the very next sentence tells us that everything's all right.

"steps into the small on-board... toilet." I get what you mean, but technically, his foot's getting wet about now.

Okay... done reading.

Quite a bit of awkward phrasing, but the story has a definite creep factor to it. High marks for that. Despite the oddities, I was interested to the end. It's an interesting world you built. Not much meat to it (hehe), but, still pretty good world-building for 5 pages.

The first couple of pages were problematic due to spelling, grammar, weird descriptions etc...

But as previously noted it did then pickup, even if the premise is relatively familiar - I seem to remember a prev OWC entry on similar ground a couple of years ago.

I digress, sanitiser was token really, but I’m being flexible with the onject this round as it was a tough one.

I wonder why a flight of this specialist nature would need a stewardess? But I thought she was there to provide the motivation for the end twist when Butch said he really liked her... genuinely thought he was going to kill Pars, shame.

Decent effort

Liked the idea of slaughterhouse inside an aircraft. Overall, this was okay read. Quite graphic and disturbing for some.

Issuing a self-correction here. Just read another script that has someone stepping into the toilet. Looked it up... writer is using it correctly. So, ignore my crappy advice. :)

Hi writer,

Quoted Text LOCKHEED HERCULES

Spent many hours in the back of these bad boys. Quite a bit of time jumping out of them as well :)

Quoted Text scans the darkness for the unexpected

I think this would be better left as "scans the darkness". Let the 'unexpected' come into the story when it needs to, no need to set us up this way. It would also be impossible to transfer this to the screen.

Quoted Text No further motion of him, stuff seems all right.

This is also a throwaway line.

I didn’t like the use of the word "chills".

Quoted Text and laid on some bulky displays

Not sure what I'm meant to be seeing here.

I'm finding the dialogue a bit clunky.

Quoted Text rather strong than fat

A bit awkwardly written in terms of what you want us to see. So does he look strong or look fat? All we will see on screen is either a big fat guy, or a big muscled guy. If he looks fat but is strong, this will need to be conveyed in some visual way.

Quoted Text BUTCH God. I really liked Jenny. PARS I guess it's what happens if you play with the wrong kids. BUTCH Hm. Agree. MOMENTS LATER At the jumpsuit, Butch carefully puts the bolt gun to Jenny's temple. He pulls the trigger, with a POP the bolt propels forward, hits Jenny's head.

This could have been a great spot for some drama and tension, the page count definitely doesn’t help. At the moment it feel too easy and matter of fact.

Quoted Text millionaires neighborhood

millionaire's

And then it ends with a page to spare. That’s a bit of a shame. I like the concept, you really had an opportunity to ramp things up in the plane, it feels a bit wasted.

The writing is just okay. The hand sanitizer made a small appearance but I feel the criteria was met.

All the best.

Hello writer

Quoted Text The PILOT, 40, scans the darkness for the unexpected.

Is he expecting the unexpected? he's looking for it so he must be, but then if he is expecting it, it's no longer the unexpected, it's the expected.... my head hurts. I'm messing around, just pointing out there's no need for the "unexpected".

The sentences are oddly written - probably a victim of the time constraint.

Not a fan of the dialogue either, a tad robotic... It gets slightly better as we go along.

I liked this, but I think if you revisit it you could make it a lot better. The premise is great, human meat to order, very creepy - I don't see much of Jenny so don't much care she is in danger - But not enough twists or turns or surprises for me - Like a last minute mind change and he kills the Butcher instead, because he is in love with Jenny - or, twist, the rich man ordering the liver turns out to be Jenny's dad and he has inadvertently ordered her death... just something to take this from a good story, to a great story.

But you had 72 hours - so damn good for a weekends work - what was the relevance of the hand gel though? I may have missed that.

The writing could do with a going over as well, but a lot of that may be down to personal style choices.

The hand sanitizer was there but played no part in the story at all. There is definitely horror galore here, though.

I’m going to somewhat disagree with others here and say that the writing had a rough start and while it stayed fairly rough throughout, the storyline itself picked up by page three, so credit there.

Curious why they needed a flight attendant — no passengers that I could tell (at least living ones). Also, at the end, he’s just carrying the liver in his pocket, and then pulls it out and throws it on their plate? Disgusting.

Overall, not bad, story wise, but the writing needs some clean up.

Best of luck,
Gary

Good story, but it’s more of a slasher than a horror script. It has a high gross-out factor, but it doesn’t instill any fear or anxiety in the audience. Still, I thought the guys in the plane were harvesting organs just to sell, so it was pretty cool when it turned out they were actually contributing to the world’s food supply.

Quoted from Spqr Good story, but it’s more of a slasher than a horror script.

What? Slasher is horror. So if there were ghosts in it would you say it's more of a paranormal story than a horror? Zombies? No horror... it's more of a zombie flick.

Bullshit.

Echoing the others by saying the opening is really rough, but it does pick up once Pars leaves the cockpit.

You gave away the best reveal right off the bat! Why tell us there are twenty Filipinos aboard? As soon as you start talking about orders for anything but organs (heads, shoulders) their fate becomes obvious.

What I didn't expect was the plane to be an abattoir. So damn cool. I want to see that on screen. There's a movie with something similar on a train? I have to find it.

What is the stewardess's job? She seems to be there just to die, which is a shame. I like the butcher's line, and the cattle gun, but there should have been something surprising about the death.

The ending could have been executed better. It is an ending, it's just flat compared to the previous scene.

The hand sanitizer isn't a factor at all. It easily could have been.

Well done with the rest, it's definitely memorable.

"...colonial clothing, white pocket square..." what does that mean? A pilgrim or puritan?

Good visuals. I can see the pilot going in the rear cabin to see bodies swinging from hooks. It's be difficult to 'keep' the meat without extensive refrigeration. Why not butcher the peeps on the ground and just package them for the flight? Pretty ridiculous, the more I think about it. But it's Hollywood, right. Bring on the crazy.

The hand sanitizer was just kind of there. It didn't really contribute to anything in the story. But it was there.

Another story where I just didn't care about any of the characters. Maybe Jenny, but she could've been a real bitch too. So, no, I didn't care about her either.

Concept has some potential. Execution of it needs a ton of work. Not a bad start.

This story is plenty disturbing, but Sean seemed to want the hand sanitizer to be more than just sitting there. After all the back and forth about the importance of props, I'm letting it slide.

The Boss is not intro'd until page 4, and then his lines are labeled MALONE instead of THE BOSS. He's the same character and not undercover or anything, so he should keep the same label. He needs some mini-intro on page 1, then can be fleshed out as it were when we finally see him.

The dialogue reads very awkwardly, a combination of on-the-nose and odd word choices. Nothing that can't be fixed with a couple rounds of editing.

Jenny needs to do something before she can be a sympathetic victim. For all we know, she's as bad as Pars and Butch and had it coming.

For a package that rare and expensive, Mr. Malone should be delivering it to the chef.

Unfortunately the logline gives away the twist. You might want to lead the audience to believe this is an organ harvesting operation, then lay on them that these lives were lost for something far more trivial.

Well this one is dark as Hell. I like it. ;D

Not sure about how you handled the Boss character. Why does he have 2 separate names? Stick to one.

Writing itself is pretty good. Some awkward phrasing and a couple of issues here and there, but for a 72 hour effort, not bad at all. Characters are decent, dialog is good.

Perhaps you should have given Jenny something more to do than just sleep and die. If you can make us like her, maybe ever care about her, then her death will be much more of a gut punch.

I like the end stinger. Made me smile. :) Lol

Story-wise, this is one of my favorites thus far. Good work.